Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs

I stopped. "Help me how?"

She planted herself in front of me, hands balled into fists like she could physically block me from walking away. "You are powerful man. Powerful men have enemies. Many problems." She tapped her chest. "I am small. Quiet. Nobody notice small Korean girl."

Then she crouched, mimed looking under something, cupped her ear like she was eavesdropping. "I can watch. I can listen. I learn many secrets working for bad men."

That made me pause.

"What kind of secrets?"

She didn't answer right away. Instead, she fished out a cracked, beaten smartphone that looked like it had survived more back-alley nights than she had. She unlocked it with trembling fingers and thrust the screen toward me. Notes. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Coded shorthand, timestamped.

"Names. Addresses. Who pays who. Where money hides." Her voice quickened as she swiped through, desperation giving her momentum. "I write every day. Safe place in phone. They don't know."

I narrowed my eyes. "You kept records?"

"Every day. Every name. Every face." She jabbed the screen with her fingertip, then pointed at me. "I know which police take money. Which judges. Which businesses are fake." Her expression hardened, steel beneath exhaustion. "I think someday I escape, I need proof to stay safe."

I felt it then—the shift. This wasn't some random girl stumbling into my plotline. This was a witness. A weapon. A walking USB drive full of rot Miami pretended didn't exist.

ARIA purred in my skull. "Master… she is leverage."

I stared at the paper in my hand. A dozen names, addresses, roles—all neatly catalogued in handwriting that looked like it had been scrawled in panic but still managed to be frighteningly precise. Judges. Detectives. Business owners. Guys who shook hands with the mayor in public, then shook hands with pimps in private. Miami's rot, laid out on a napkin by a starving girl who should've been worrying about college entrance exams instead of blackmail material.

[Mission Options Available:

Option One: Legal Assistance

Deliver subject to proper authorities. Provide legal support through official channels. Ensure safe repatriation or asylum

Reward: 2,000 SP]

[Option Two: Personal Liberation

Subject is legally an adult (18+) and can choose her own path. Offer employment and protection within your organization. Provide complete freedom from trafficking network.

Reward: 20,000 SP]

I rubbed my temple. Twenty thousand SP wasn't chump change, but compared to the potential nightmare of babysitting a trafficking survivor with a death wish? My brain screamed no thanks. Margaret was the priority. She was the payday. She was the leverage.

I wasn't desperate for twenty thousand SP. That was pocket change. The real mission—the one tied to Margaret—would net me a hundred thousand SP and a super mystery box. That was the kind of haul worth bleeding for.

Soo-Jin's presence alone complicated this mission. And every second I spent here with Soo-Jin, every minute wasted on her tears and promises, only made that mission harder.

"Soo-Jin," I said, folding the paper. "I appreciate what you're offering, but I don't need an informant. I need to—"

"I cook!" she cut in, words tumbling over each other like they were being chased. She mimed stirring a pot, then kissed her fingers dramatically. "Korean food, Japanese food, American food. Very, very good cook!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Not really running a restaurant."

"I clean house!" She pantomimed sweeping, then scrubbing, moving with a kind of obsessive speed. "I make everything perfect, very organized."

"I don't need a maid either."

Her face crumpled. For one second, she looked like a broken kid about to collapse on the sidewalk. I felt a hold on my soul, Linda Carter had saved me when she would've choose not to, I was nothing to her, no good reason to take me in but here I was rejecting to help a girl when she even had so much to offer, and the system had also to offer to.

Then, Soo-Jin snapped upright, jaw set, dark eyes flashing. That steel again.

"Then I learn what you need. I am fast learner. Very smart." She tapped her temple like it was a drum. "Four languages. Computers too. Bad men make me manage their customer database." Her lips twisted at the word customer. "I know systems. I know numbers. I know people. But above that all... I know very good computer, more."

She leaned forward. "What do powerful men need most?"

"Time," I said before I could stop myself. "And fewer complications."

Her entire face lit up. "Yes! Yes, I give you time! I handle small problems, so you handle big problems. I make life easy, not hard." She did not understand what I meant, did she?

Then she pulled out another folded sheet of paper with both hands, reverent as if it were scripture. this one was more detailed. "This list—bad men who chase me. All their places. If you help me disappear, they never find me. They never bother you."

I opened it. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

This wasn't a sob story. This was intel. This was ammunition. This was the kind of evidence people killed for—and she'd been walking around with it stuffed in her pocket.

"Jesus Christ, Soo-Jin," I muttered. "This is a whole criminal empire."

"Yes," she whispered, eyes locked on mine. "And they want me dead because I know too much. But if I work for you, I vanish. Their problem gone. Your problem gone."

I was about to push her off again—too messy, too risky, too… alive—when ARIA's voice purred into my head.

"Master. This paper... the network she's documented on this paper isn't random. After I ran everything three names on her list cross with Margaret's kidnappers. Her intel is directly linked to your primary objective."

That snapped my attention like a gunshot.

I looked at Soo-Jin. "These men… do they work with people who kidnap rich women for ransom?"

Her eyes widened. "Yes! Yes. They take rich women, poor women, any women they can sell. Tonight too. You—" She grabbed my arm, nails digging into my sleeve. "You know someone they take?"

"Yeah. Tonight."

"Then you need me." She yanked out her battered phone and thumbed open a map marked with red pins. "I know where they go. Safe houses. Meeting places. Police don't look because police are blind. Paid blind."

Her gaze locked onto mine, dark eyes burning with desperation and something sharper—survival. "You help me disappear; I help you find your person. Fair trade."

I studied her for a long, heavy moment. She wasn't just some stray beauty dropped in my path by fate or by the system. She was a survivor who'd turned trauma into weapons, into files, into data that could topple an empire.

"Yes. But we must hurry. They move people fast when good police might look." She mimed something being shoved into a truck, her movements stiff with urgency. "Tonight, maybe tomorrow, then gone forever."

I pulled out my phone. "ARIA, verify the addresses on Soo-Jin's list against Margaret's possible locations."

"Cross-referencing now... Master, four of her documented safe houses match our probable target sites. Her intelligence is accurate."

I looked at Soo-Jin. Hope was written all over her face, but so was desperation. "If I help you, you understand this isn't charity. You work for what you get. No exceptions." I can't forget my Oh So Serious Voie.

"Yes! I work very hard. You never regret." She bowed again, deeper this time, like I was some emperor handing out blessings instead of a guy who'd just dropped forty stories.

"And if you're lying about any of this—if you bring drama or danger to my people—the trafficking ring will be the least of your problems."

Her expression hardened instantly. The nervous little girl mask was gone, replaced with steel. "I swear on my ancestors' graves. No lies, no drama, no trouble. Only hard work and loyalty."

That, at least, sounded better than ninety percent of the promises I'd heard in Miami.

"I will take you in for now. We'll handle the paperwork later. Real ID, real cover, real safety so that you're not in US illegally. After I save the one that needs saving."

Soo-Jin looked at me like I was holy. Her hands trembled. Her eyes watered. "You... you really help me?"

"Yeah," I said flatly. "But you earn it by helping me find Margaret. No results, no deal."

She nodded so hard I thought her head might snap off. "I find her. I promise. I find her tonight."

And she'd just put herself under my name.

Which meant she was mine to protect now.

[DING! OPTION TWO SELECTED: PERSONAL LIBERATION]

[REWARD: 20,000 SP EARNED]

[New Woman Acquired: Soo-Jin Park]

ARIA purred in my head like she was enjoying the show. "Congratulations, Master. You didn't just rescue a stray—you recruited a weapon."

The hunt for Margaret had just picked up momentum.

And maybe, just maybe, I'd added another blade to my arsenal.